Higher Powers
by Gerri
Summary: Ben, Max and Alec think about religion...and where they fit in all of it.


A/N: There are three characters narrating here; each of them has their part of the story, and now that I've clarified that, I hope that this doesn't get too confusing for you people! Enjoy. :)

Higher Powers

**By Gerri**

I'd read somewhere, that before the Pulse, people had thought that genetic engineering just wasn't right.

They'd thought that it "wasn't ethical" and that scientists were "playing God".

People didn't like the idea that they wanted to clone human beings and make designer babies.

Well, guess what? All that crap didn't stop Manticore.

They made us.

We put the "designer" in "designer babies". We don't just look good; we're X5, the most perfect soldiers that Manticore's ever created.

Aesthetic beauty, animal grace…we're the next level of human evolution; an unnatural level, but it's a level, no less.

That's what we are. Unnatural.

Nature gave each species on Earth each own kind of DNA, its own unique signature that it would leave behind wherever it had been for thousands more years after the physical body wasted away.

But we have DNA that blurs all the lines and makes the worlds of human and animal run and blend into each other.

And all the beautiful colours mix together…forming browns and blacks, all dark colours. Darkness is what we were born out of and into. I guess that's why most of us like wearing dark colours.

Brought up, trained, educated and brainwashed in Manticore…it was mostly darkness there. I suppose we just don't feel like the bright colours suit us. Brightness just isn't us.

Nature never meant for transgenics to happen.

In her eyes, we're probably anomal-

No. We're not Nomlies.

The Blue Lady will stop the Nomlies from getting us and turning us into of them.

Come to think of it, people thought that the idea of genetic engineering went against religion too.

But I believe in the Blue Lady.

I have faith in her.

We all do.

That's religion, isn't it?

Isn't it…?

I don't know.

Sometimes I feel the Lady's given up on me.

And the most frightening thing is, I know that she has every reason to do just that.

Funny, isn't it? What I'm most scared of is that she has the right to turn her back on me?

But yeah, it's true.

After all, we're a violation of her laws. We go against everything that she stands for.

To her, our very existence is probably a crime.

And maybe…that's why…I'm so…dependent on her.

Maybe…in some way, I'm trying to make up for being created.

But she has every reason to turn her back on me.

_But it isn't our fault!_ We couldn't stop them from making _us_! Why do the Blue Lady and everyone else hate _us_ for something that we couldn't prevent?! Why don't they go blame Manticore instead?!

If people believe in religion and that everything is planned by higher powers, then why don't they think that we were meant to happen? Why do they think that we shouldn't be allowed to exist?

I've asked the Blue Lady countless times…and she never answers.

I need answers.

I just don't _understand_ everyone out here!!!

I don't even remember how it all started.

I vaguely remember reaching my hand up absently one day, and running it over the back of my neck…and then I remembered what was there.

A barcode.

The branding that made _all_ of us different from everyone else.

I guess I had an epiphany then.

I realised that the barcode was what identified us as transgenics.

If we didn't exist, maybe the Blue Lady would be happy.

It all made sense suddenly.

I started tattooing my barcode onto people's necks, and then killing them.

It made sense…it was like killing myself, wasn't it?

If I "killed" myself enough times…maybe I could make up for every single one that Manticore had created.

Don't be angry with us…I promise, I'll make it up to you…

I'm sorry…

I'm sorry for existing.

***

I walked down the street.

Some kids were playing basketball, shouting for the ball, shouting for their teammate to take the shot.

I heard church bells ringing.

They seemed to be mocking me with their deep, hollow rings.

I opened the door of the church and stepped in.

And suddenly, I felt so…small.

A large cross on the far wall, at the end of the aisle, stained glass windows with religious images, and row upon row of stiff, brown pews.

In a way, the rigid atmosphere reminded me of Manticore, just a little.

But what really scared me was the air of reverence about the place.

It seemed to be threatening me, shrieking at me to leave.

This was a holy place, after all, and me…I was a severely tainted being.

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

I had no business being here; I was the antipathy of everything that religion stood for.

I was only here because I had to know if Ben was doing what I suspected he was doing.

Why, Ben?

Why are you doing this?

Haven't you realised that everything that we believed about the Blue Lady wasn't real?

She wouldn't help us…she probably hated us for existing.

Maybe that's why she let Jack and Eva die.

But you probably don't think so, right, Ben?

You probably think that it was our fault that they died.

Why do you still believe, Ben?

Why are you the only one of all of us who has this urge to believe in a transcendent being?

Even after Manticore taught us that we could only rely on our team and ourselves?

Why do you still believe in her?

Religion isn't for us, Ben…

Religion doesn't have any place for transgenics.

***

It's a windy night.

Well, given that the top of the Space Needle is so high up, it usually is windy, but there is a pretty strong wind tonight.

Ever notice how silence and solitude inspire deep thought?

I don't know why I decided to come up here, but the quiet is starting to make me think.

I never did much thinking back at Manticore. The officers never encouraged soul-searching or self-reflection, and there wasn't a need for us to think, anyway.

The officers did the thinking. We just followed orders.

But then, I got thrown out into the real world. The rules rewrote themselves. I had to start thinking for myself.

Out in the real world, I quickly learned that people would shun us as freaks if they knew what we are.

Max and I only get accepted by people because Manticore made us beautiful, and of course, because they don't know what we are.

Why can't people just be thankful that at least we _look_ human?

We are still mostly human; so much for Manticore's vision of the perfect soldier; if anyone cuts us, we still bleed.

But that doesn't matter to people; we're _different_. That's all that matters.

Honestly, sometimes I can't believe that I come from a species with such narrow minds.

Ben couldn't handle being out in the world.

He snapped.

That hasn't happened to me, or maybe it hasn't happened yet; I don't know.

Sometimes, I can't help thinking that maybe if Ben had at least had the chance to go on a few solo missions before he escaped, he might have adapted better to this world.

Going out into the real world, straight from Manticore…that transition was too sudden. And it would be very damaging for someone who'd never even seen the outside world before.

Sometimes I think that, if Ben had at least undertaken a solo mission before…

Ben might have lived.

I might have been able to meet him.

Max once told me that Ben had believed that his killing people and giving their teeth as offerings would appease some Blue Lady of his. She said that her group of X5s had had some sort of…cult-like fascination with her when she was younger.

I couldn't imagine it. I mean, _religion_? Inside _Manticore's_ walls?

Try picturing a chapel in that place, and you'll see what I mean.

But I guess, anything is possible; after all, if we were brainwashed to be blindly loyal to Manticore, and yet the twelve of them escaped, I'd say that things definitely could happen.

Religion was one of the very things that I found in the real world.

It's pretty hard to believe that people still believe in a God after the Pulse.

But maybe "religion" is just another word for "hope".

People don't just live on food and drink.

They live on hope.

Without hope, there isn't any reason to go on living.

So maybe, people's excuse for having a God to pray to, is really just a thread of desperate hope that this is all just a really long, really bad dream, and that they'll wake up in their beds on a Sunday morning and nothing ever happened.

Personally, I don't believe in God, and I don't believe that there is one either.

Why should I?

I wasn't conceived. I was made.

I wasn't conceived through the sexual union of two people who loved and promised themselves to each other; I wasn't the tiny miracle that was part-coincidence, part-"God's plan".

I wasn't God's creation.

I was made by Man. Dreamed up by Man. Created in a petri-dish in a cold, sterile lab, where human cells were poked and prodded around, made to unite in specific ways by concentrated chemicals, and forcibly spliced with the DNA of Nature's more powerful predators.

"God" had no part in my creation.

If he was the one who created normal kids, then he created them in a better…gentler way than Manticore did.

He made sure that his kids had mothers and fathers who would always be there for them. He made sure that the parents would feel attached to the kid, and vice versa. He made sure that his kids had love.

"Love" wasn't something that Manticore's kids had heard of.

I have my reasons for not believing that there is a God.

If there really were a God, he wouldn't have allowed us to be born, into this world which only has hate for us instead of love. 

If there really were a God, he wouldn't have allowed us to be created.

End


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